Abstract

Previous research has shown that axillar and vaginal odors from ovulating women are recognized by men, but no research has been done exploring whether body odors signal other physical attributes of women such as waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) or endocrine status. Our goal was to investigate whether testosterone increased in men after smelling axillary odors of women with different WHR and with low or high levels of steroid hormones. We measured men’s testosterone before and after 30 min of being exposed to fresh axillar odors collected from young women or a neutral odor as control situation. Men had to rate the attractiveness and intensity of the scent. We compared the response of men according to women’s WHR and salivary testosterone, estradiol and progesterone. Although the main literature commonly reports that men judge a WHR around 0.7 to be more visually attractive, our results showed that men rated samples of high WHR (0.75-0.84) and high estradiol women as more attractive. In addition, men’s testosterone increased after smelling the odors of high WHR, high estradiol and high testosterone women. High WHR women exhibited the highest testosterone and estradiol levels compared to the other WHR categories (0.66-0.74). We concluded that scents are cues that not only signal fertility but also physical attributes related to reproductive health.